


medium heat curry from a box

by daikonjou



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 10:45:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daikonjou/pseuds/daikonjou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kazunari and his boyfriend make dinner one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	medium heat curry from a box

**Author's Note:**

> Set somewhat ambiguously into a future in which they cohabit. (crossposted to [tumblr](http://aitsura.tumblr.com/post/84100087700/medium-heat-curry-from-a-box-kurobasu))

Scalpels and kitchen knives handle differently. Kazunari knows that, but it’s still kind of fascinating to watch Shin-chan squint sternly down at the cutting board, knife in hand and carefully cutting carrots into perfectly even cubes. Shin-chan has no gift for cooking, but his fastidious nature makes him do things like this, spending thirty minutes cutting carrots into smaller and smaller cubes until he might as well have tossed the remainder of the root into the food processor (they have a food processor, it’s a thing) for all the good it does him to cut pieces that small.  
  
"Shin-chan, this is curry, not salad with a geometry fetish. It doesn’t matter what the pieces look like, you’re not going to be able to tell when you’re eating it later." Kazunari grabs the spare cutting board and the onions and starts cutting with the spare chef’s knife. It takes him three minutes to finely chop two onions; he scrapes the pieces into the pot with the other side of the knife. He starts on the potatoes, cutting large, roughly bite-sized chunks.  
  
"Hmph."  
  
"No, seriously though Shin-chan. You have the steadiest hands of anybody I know and that’s really," Kazunari pauses to swallow. "That’s really something. I just kind of want to eat tonight and not at three AM." He dumps the potatoes into the pot, takes the cutting board and the knife over to the sink to wash.  
  
"Did you forget the oil again?" Shin-chan says, pretty scathingly, and yeah okay Kazunari did forget the oil. Again. Fine. He deserved that one.  
  
Knife and board clean and set out to dry, Kazunari fishes a bottle out of the cabinet and drizzles sesame oil into the pot as an afterthought, gives the lot a toss (scrapes onion off the ladle, finds it easier just to grab the pot by the handles and shake the stuff around until the oil’s more or less distributed). “How much brown rice are we putting in this time?” he asks, eyeing the rice cooker.  
  
Shin-chan keeps cutting, the motions of his knife brisk and deliberate, but completely unhurried. “We don’t have to cut the rice today.”  
  
"Really? I mean, I know you’ve been doing the health food thing lately—"  
  
"It’s fine, Takao."  
  
The last time Shin-chan had lectured him about the health merits of brown rice over white rice is still way recent, but Kazunari shrugs and digs out the sack of white rice. “How much are we making?”  
  
"Enough for tonight and breakfast tomorrow."  
  
"You planning on having seconds?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Well, I am," Kazunari declares. He tugs the metal bowl out of the rice cooker and tilts the sack over it, watches the grains pour in until he eyeballs it as enough. Then he rights the sack and ties it shut. He replaces it onto its spot on the shelf, between the marks Shin-chan let him draw on the particle board lip as guides.  
  
Shin-chan’s knife hand slows. “Takao.”  
  
"Yeah? Oh, hey, you’re on your last carrot."  
  
"Mm."  
  
"What’s up?" Kazunari walks back across the kitchen to the sink, turns the cold water on. He listens to it filling the bowl, a soft _shhhhhh_ until the rice is covered, and turns off the faucet. Washing rice is mindless and soothing at the same time, sinking his fingers into the grains and swishing the lot around. The water in the rice cooker’s metal bowl goes milky white.  
  
"Do you…" Shin-chan exhales, slowly, as if the question is physically painful to get out.  
  
It’s impossible to see the rice anymore through the water, clouded as it’s become. Kazunari pours it out, careful not to spill the rice grains, and turns the faucet on again. He flicks stray rice grains stuck to his fingers back into the bowl. “Do I what, Shin-chan?”  
  
"Do you have plans this weekend?"  
  
Kazunari turns off the faucet and swishes rice grains around the metal bowl some more. “Not really.”  
  
The kitchen is silent but for the sound of the knife and the swish of of rice grains and water swirling in a bowl.  
  
"Had something in mind, Shin-chan?" The water’s clouded milky-white again, flecks of foam around the edges. Kazunari pours it out and debates washing the rice a third time. He turns on the faucet.  
  
"Do you have your passport?"  
  
Kazunari turns off the faucet. “Did you ask if I had my passport?”  
  
"Answer the question, Takao," Shin-chan says, knife stopped. He’s down to the bottom of the root, where the carrot tapered thinnest, and there are bits of not-quite cubed carrot all over the cutting board.  
  
"Sorry, thought I was hearing things." Kazunari shrugs. "Yeah. What, are we fleeing the country?"  
  
"Don’t be absurd, Takao, if we were fleeing the country we would have already separated." There is a certain note in Shin-chan’s voice that suggests he finds the notion unacceptable.  
  
Kazunari turns the faucet back on. “I see you’re still here, though.”  
  
Shin-chan scrapes the cutting board with the knife once, twice, three times. Four. Kazunari hopes he’s not using the sharp edge.  
  
The rice is probably fine after two washes, so Kazunari puts the pot of rice and water into the cooker and closes the lid. He presses the large button on the front interface; the rice cooker beeps at him. Then he goes over to the stove and turns on the heat. “Hey, Shin-chan, can you wash up that knife? You don’t have to do anything after that.”  
  
"Hmph." Shin-chan takes his knife and cutting board over to the sink. Kazunari listens to the water run, stirring the contents of the pot.  
  
The onions are just starting to brown when Shin-chan comes up behind him and wraps him up in a hug. Sometimes he peppers the side of Kazunari’s face with kisses, but today he just rests his chin on Kazunari’s shoulder. “Shin-chan, you’re heavy,” Kazunari says.  
  
"Mm."  
  
"I’m gonna need to get the water, you know."  
  
"Pitcher on the counter," Shin-chan says, muffled against Kazunari’s hair. "I measured it out." His breath tickles against Kazunari’s ear.  
  
"Shin-chan, you great big limpet." Kazunari shuffles over enough to grab the pitcher, shuffles back so he can pour its contents into the pot. He turns up the heat.  
  
They watch the pot come to a boil before Kazunari turns the heat down to low and puts the lid on the pot. Then they shuffle awkwardly along out of the kitchen to the couch in the living room before finally Shin-chan lets go.  
  
"What’s the matter, Shin-chan?" Kazunari says, because Shin-chan has just paused in the middle leaning in, hands still on Kazunari’s shoulders.  
  
"We forgot the meat."  
  
Kazunari has to stop and think about that. Onions, carrots, potatoes. The rice is cooking. The meat… is still probably in the fridge, wrapped in plastic. “Well, damn. Will you be totally heartbroken if there’s no meat in the curry tonight, Shin-chan?”  
  
"Hmph," Shin-chan says. "Don’t be foolish."  
  
"Hey, no harm in asking. That tickles!" Kazunari squirms under Shin-chan’s hands, laughing.  
  
Instead of kissing him, though, Shin-chan just kind of slumps onto Kazunari, pinning him to the couch. “Takao.”  
  
"Yeah, Shin-chan?"  
  
"My hands won’t stop shaking," Shin-chan says.  
  
"You nervous after all?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Kazunari plants a kiss on Shin-chan’s forehead. “It’s okay. I have faith in you. You’ll be fine.”  
  
"Kazu."  
  
"Yeah, Shin-chan?"  
  
Shin-chan hesitates. “… Nothing.”  
  
"I’m going to go check on the vegetables, okay?" Kazunari says, but doesn’t really move to extricate himself from under Shin-chan.  
  
"Okay."  
  
"I love you," Kazunari says.  
  
"I have this weekend off," Shin-chan blurts.  
  
Kazunari laughs. “I have my passport.”  
  
"Do you want to go to Toronto?"  
  
"What, you mean you weren’t planning a romantic getaway to Paris?"  
  
"I don’t speak French, and we can’t get married in _Paris_ ,” Shin-chan says, irritably. His eyes immediately go comically wide, like he’d revealed something he hadn’t meant to.  
  
"Pfft. Shin-chan, that is the single most unromantic proposal I’ve ever heard, and we were there for the time Aomine shoved both his feet in his mouth instead of saying something to Kuroko."  
  
"Hmph! You don’t have to marry me if you don’t like it."  
  
"I love it, you dork," Kazunari says, and he has to kiss Shin-chan a few times before finally wriggling out from under Shin-chan’s weight. The air is noticeably colder without Shin-chan draped over him.  
  
(When the curry is done, he serves Shin-chan an extra large helping of rice and curry from a box with no meat in it, and watches Shin-chan eat every bite.)


End file.
